


Outliers

by local_doom_void



Series: Murder in the 20th Century [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Ghosts, Harry Potter is not the Master of Death, Harry is a Goddamn Sweetheart, Necromancer Harry Potter, Necromancy, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, Young Harry Potter, Young Tom Riddle, because Tom was dead obvy, being a ghost is really traumatic, don't go thinking that's what I'm doing here, just without the twist ending, they're children guys, we're talking sixth sense here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 13:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18801109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Hadrian 'Harry' James Potter can see more ghosts than the usual child, even by the lax standards of Wixen Britain. The question of 'why' is up in the air - but at least his parents are on board, and so far, nobody seems to have cared enough to try and argue that his abilities make him illegal, insofar as the Ministry is concerned.When Harry is eight years old, he meets the first ghost he's ever seen who is also a kid like him.





	Outliers

**Author's Note:**

> Have you come here directly from _the Statistic_? Welcome. Enjoy your fix-it.
> 
> If you haven't read _the Statistic_ , it's something of a one-shot prologue to _Outliers_. You don't technically need to have read it to be able to understand this piece. However, I think that it does a fair amount of the legwork of being more explicit about why Tom's acting the way he's acting in the beginning of this work. It also provides a clue for our later plot, if you read it carefully.

Hadrian ‘Harry’ Potter, son of James and Lily Potter, could see dead people. He could speak to them, and touch them, too - something decidedly rarer than merely the ability to see. Of course, every witch and wizard could see some ghosts, the ghosts of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry being the most well-known of the lot. But those ghosts, as it turned out, were no more than a terribly small subset of ghosts that could, and did, exist in the world.

James and Lily discovered this truth when Harry, at age 3 and on vacation to Ireland with his mother and father, asked why his new friend Martha from the woods near their rental cottage had a gaping hole in her chest that revealed her ribs. This led, amongst other things, to James working on a vacation as he negotiated with muggle contacts in the local police force to uncover and properly bury Martha’s body. Despite the decomposition, she had the remnant signs of a wound just as Harry had described, and a few days later, James asked Harry how he’d known she was there.

“I could hear her crying,” Harry said. “I didn’t want her to be crying so I said hi, and then you helped her! She’s gone away to be happy now, though.” His little face fell, but only for a moment. “I’m gonna miss her.”

After the first incident, more occurred - an onslaught that the new parents didn’t quite feel equipped to deal with. Harry toddled happily up to empty street corners, deserted alleyways, bedroom corners, eerie shadows on bridges, or into wooded groves, and struck up conversations with unknown and unseeable figures. At first, Lily, who heard a few more of these conversations than her husband, imagined that they were childish in content simply because Harry was a child. But…

“He’s stuck being sad,” Harry said sadly one day in a park, crouched by a tree and staring at the roots with intensity. “He can’t even talk.”

Lily watched her son coax an unseen person from silence to speech, talking the way she would speak to a frightened child, and wondered if she even wanted to know.

But they needed to know - Harry could be some sort of prodigy, the owner of a rare magical talent that hadn’t been heard from in a while. Or he could be a little… different, in the head. James maintained that this thought was Lily’s muggle upbringing coming to the fore, claiming that people who saw things were only insane and nothing more, and that it didn’t matter whether or not what Harry saw was some standard of ‘real’. Lily accepted that of course they’d never be able to be totally sure, perhaps. But she still wished to know for certain.

Her genealogical searching brought news both good and bad. Good, because Harry’s abilities had been documented before, and so were magical and real, not the result of some rather unfortunately crossed neural wiring. Bad, because the abilities were limited to the Peverell family, one of James’ ancestral lineages, and the family and their abilities had been given the general term of “necromancy”.

Which was now illegal, or presumed to be so - but the only true illegality was the creation of the mindless Inferius, James saw as he did research in the Ministry Halls of Law after hours. Granted, they didn’t know what Harry was capable of. But the criminalization addressed only the act of doing, not the state of being capable, and James was confident that he could raise his son to not raise the unwilling dead. With this in mind, and with James’ research and Sirius’ family library to inform him of some of the intricacies of the less known necromantic practices, the Potters hired a barrister and filed a small variety of statements on laws and their scope, setting out their position on the legality of Harry’s existance - just in case.

Lily refused to discourage Harry from hiding himself, and soon Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy, and a number of other wixen children of Harry’s age, along with all their families, knew quite a lot about Harry’s abilities. There were a few upsets, but none major enough, and Lily and James began to feel more optimistic about everything. If it became a generally open secret that Harry was the way he was, then surely nobody could really object to him. Everyone would simply know him as a sweet boy who happened to be able to see the dead.

For Harry was sweet, Lily thought fiercely and often. Her boy was always willing to help any old ghost he came across, even going so far as to simply run off without any warning when he saw one. It drove Lily to distraction, sometimes, but by now she had accepted it as just another uniqueness. Harry wanted nothing more than to help, and Lily loved how caring he was.

Therefore, she didn’t exactly panic when she turned away from explaining the non-magical crosswalk lights to James, and saw Harry scampering off down a side street and entering an alley.

  


Harry could see ghosts. He had always been able to see ghosts - he hadn’t even realized how odd it was until he had been asked some very pointed questions by his mum and dad about the friends who nobody else could see. Soon after, they had realized that the people he could speak to were ghosts, and while his parents had a lot of meetings with Barrister Wilson about it, Harry hadn’t paid much attention to that. He went on as he had always done - talking to anyone who looked like they needed it.

So it was that one day in Muggle London, Harry skipped away from his parents while his mum was explaining something boring to his dad, and saw a boy standing in an alley, staring up at the sky and holding perfectly still.

Some of the ghosts Harry encountered were very mobile and talkative, and some were upset, but knew exactly what they needed to have done before they could relax and melt away. The talkative ghosts never really needed help, though Harry would chatter. The upset ghosts would receive Harry’s questions gratefully, and would always tell him what they needed to be done. Harry prided himself on being good at getting their requests done, even if sometimes he did need his mum and dad’s help.

Some ghosts, though, were still and silent. ‘Stuck’, Harry had taken to calling them. These were the ghosts that made Harry the saddest - they could barely think or move on their own, and Harry often had to coax them into talking at all. They were also the most common sort of ghost - Harry only sometimes met any of the other kinds.

The boy was probably a ghost, Harry thought. Staring like that, so silently, and standing stock-still, were all very ghosty things to do if he was stuck. But he wondered. Harry didn’t see a lot of kid ghosts. People his age rarely seemed to become ghosts, for some reason that Harry had never been able to quite comprehend. It made him question whether or not the boy was really a ghost.

He’d need to get closer, to find out.

Content with this, Harry skipped into the alley, until he was level with the boy. “Hi!” he chirped.

The boy didn’t look down, or move at all. Harry frowned, and looked up, wondering if there was actually something interesting up there. But it was merely the cloud-scraped blue sky, and a pigeon wandering around on the edge of the roof of one of the brick houses that made up the walls of the alley.

“Are you watching the pigeon?” he asked, looking back at the boy, who still hadn’t moved at all. His chest wasn’t moving, either, Harry thought as he squinted.

He was probably a ghost.

“Is it not the pigeon?” Harry asked, keeping up a rhythm of chatter. Ghosts tended to respond well to chatter that was directed at them, even if they didn’t always respond at first. “I can’t see anything else interesting.”

Slowly, the boy’s neck unbent, and he lowered his chin to look at Harry.

Definitely a ghost, Harry thought, taking in the boy’s pale, pale skin, and the dark, gray, sunken color surrounding his eyes. All ghosts looked like that - Harry would recognize the look anywhere. It wasn’t quite a human look, even though ghosts were human souls. There was something eerie about it, all in all.

The boy had short black hair, a little wavy, and ruffled. His eyes were a pale, washed-out gray color, his pupils gone - another ghost feature. His lips were grayish-blue, still pale, and his face was blank and expressionless - he wore a worn, threadbare gray coat covered with patches, and a scarf around his neck, even though it was summer.

“Hello!” Harry said, smiling at the ghost boy and waving shortly at him.

With a dazed look, the ghost boy slowly turned his head and part of his upper body to look behind him. Then he turned back to look at Harry, just as slowly as before.

Harry frowned. “I’m talking to you, silly,” he said. The ghost probably didn’t believe him. He tried to smile again. “Hey,” he reached out to gently place his hand on the ghost’s upper arm, ignoring the freezing chill that emanated from the ghost’s body. “Are you okay?”

The ghost boy moved very quickly then, as his eyes shot down to Harry’s hand on his arm. Harry decided to think of this as progress, and tried to smile encouragingly. When he didn’t get any speech from the ghost, or any other movement, he slid his hand down to the ghost’s hand, taking it and squeezing it encouragingly. Ever so slowly, the ghost boy slowly curled his fingers around Harry’s palm in response, and his eyes slowly returned to Harry’s face. Harry grinned even harder with the hand-hold completed - progress! And the ghost boy was looking at him, which by now meant he had to know that Harry was there, at least. That was always the hardest part.

Before Harry could decide what to say, the ghost slowly lifted up his other arm and grabbed Harry’s hand with both of his. It felt like his hand had been plunged into ice water, but Harry gritted his teeth and forced himself not to look uncomfortable, because the ghost kid looked like he was about to cry. Ghosts got like that a lot, when Harry touched them or held their hand. He always liked to let them do it, because he couldn’t imagine going for even a week without holding hands with his mum or dad, or hugging them. Most ghosts that Harry met had been dead for a lot longer than a week.

“My name is Harry,” Harry said, shifting to step a little bit closer to the ghost so that he didn’t have to stretch his hand out as far. “I live in Godric’s Hollow, near Exmoor - it’s in Devon.”

The ghost kid didn’t do anything. He was back to staring down at their joined hands and not really moving. Not breathing, either - but only really recent ghosts still pretended to breathe, so that didn’t mean much.

“Do you remember how to talk?” Harry asked again. “I want to help you. You were probably stuck in here, right? I bet it was really lonely.”

Still nothing. Harry wondered if maybe the ghost had gotten stuck again - they could get stuck on different things. He knew from experience that he needed to do something surprising or different enough to get the ghost to be un-stuck, so he carefully reached out and placed his free hand on top of their already-joined hands, completing the four-way handhold between the two of them.

The ghost’s image shivered and blurred for a moment, and then he was moving again, slowly looking back up to Harry’s face. Harry grinned, triumphantly, and tried to look reassuring again. “Holding hands is nice, right?” he said. “Do you have a name? It would be nice to have something to call you other than ‘ghost’.”

The ghost’s lips moved, faintly, but no indication of a thought came to Harry’s mind.

Harry bounced a little on his heels, squeezing the ghost’s hands encouragingly in his. “You can do it, I believe in you! It’s easiest to do something simple first, if you haven’t talked in a while - maybe ‘hi’?”

That look might be confusion. Harry forced himself to keep up his smile. “Anything that works for you is good, though. You know the sounds you need, right? I promise I’ll be able to hear you. I can see you, can’t I? And touch you!”

The ghost’s mouth kept moving faintly as Harry chattered, forming shapes that Harry felt sure were trying very hard to be words. He kept talking, moving from encouragement to chattering about the weather, and silly stuff, but he made sure he kept smiling at the other boy.

Hhhh, he heard, a thought-sound that more like an intake of air than anything else - but it was there.

“I heard that!” he exclaimed. “You’re doing it! I told you you could!”

Eh, Harry heard next. Then, finally, a pale, faint ‘e...llo floated through the air between them, and the ghost’s face changed, eyes widening in shock.

“Hi!” Harry said. The ghost wasn’t pronouncing his aitch, but Harry figured that it wasn’t any of his business to be nitpicky. He could understand it, after all, and that was probably all the ghost really wanted at the moment. “You did it! I’m real happy for you.”

The ghost tightened his grip on Harry’s hands and leaned a little forwards, staring at Harry without blinking. Ghosts didn’t blink, so that was normal, and Harry had learned not to be freaked out by it too much.

How, the ghost said. His lips weren’t moving much - that was also something Harry had seen before. How, he said again, before Harry could figure out how to reply. How, how, how -

“Oh.” Harry shrugged. “Well, it’s just something I’ve always been able to do, you know? I mean, I guess you wouldn’t have known, ‘cause you’ve never met me before, but I’ve always been able to do it.” The ghost was staring at him raptly, so Harry pushed on. “It’s because there were a couple of really accomplished necromancers in my family tree, probably, and the powers just skipped a bunch of generations.” The green-eyed boy paused. “Or, well, that’s what my mum and dad think, anyway.”

The ghost didn’t say anything to that. Harry noticed his gaze beginning to drift back down to their joined hands, so he quickly thought of something to say. “Do you think you can tell me your name?”

The ghost looked back up, eyes wide in his pale face.

It’s - Tom, the ghost said, after a pause. Then again, almost wonderingly: I’m… Tom.

“Hello, Tom,” Harry said. “I’m Harry.”

You’re Harry, Tom repeated. He still wasn’t being very animated - Harry worried that if he were to let go of his hands, Tom would just go back to standing there. He needed to think of some excuse to get him to move away, if this was where he usually stood. Technically, Harry knew, he could have just pulled Tom away - but only some ghosts could handle that sort of displacement without dissolving into hysterics. He’d feel terrible if he did that to Tom.

“Harry?” a familiar voice called from the direction of the alley entrance. “Harry James Potter!”

“Oops,” Harry muttered, feeling a little guilty. Mum probably wasn’t very happy if she was calling him ‘Harry James’. He supposed he kind of had very sneakily wandered away when they weren’t paying attention to him, but it had been for a good reason. He looked over and saw his mum’s red hair standing in the entrance to the alley. The neat knot of her Gryffindor bandana had come undone from her hair, and her green eyes were narrowed at him in the Mum’s Gonna Yell a Lot look.

“You get out of there this instant! Your dad and I nearly gave birth to a nest of nargles when you vanished like that!”

“But mum - ” Harry started to say.

He didn’t get much farther, because Tom had flung himself at Harry. A pair of only partly insubstantial arms that seemed to be made entirely of chilled, tingly air wrapped around Harry’s neck and shoulders. Even though Tom being a ghost, and couldn’t bring much force to bear, Harry staggered backwards by a step anyway, shocked by the sudden coldness.

Don’t leave, Tom was saying, his thin voice almost a babble. Don’t leave, don’t go, don’t leave me alone here again don’t leave me alone -

His mum was saying something, but Harry didn’t have time to bother with keeping track of both her and Tom. He decided to pick Tom, since Tom was probably more important right now, and so he brought his arms up and carefully hugged Tom back.

“I won’t leave you! Promise,” Harry said. A fantastic idea struck him suddenly. Now that Tom had moved himself away from the wall on his own - “Hey, come with me this way, okay? I have a surprise for you.”

What, Tom said. Harry grabbed one of Tom’s arms, such as he could reach, and marched purposely towards the alley’s entrance. He was glad he had grabbed, too - Tom tried to tug away from him, but he was a ghost who wasn’t used to affecting anything, and Harry was used to dealing with ghosts.

I can’t leave, Tom said dully as they reached the entrance.

“You can now! Watch,” Harry whispered.

Tom probably didn’t believe him. But Harry didn’t get to hear what the ghost boy would have said to refute him. The bubble keeping Tom from crossing the alley’s liminal spaces was very easy to sense while he was holding onto the ghost boy. It felt like melting snow, and tasted like salt. Harry reached out with his special magic and carefully wiped it away, imagining that he was erasing the entire chalkboard after a tutoring session with Uncle Moony. The barrier bent, whining, and popped, leaving behind one last burst of salt that was almost strong enough to smell.

Harry hummed to himself, and quickly walked outside, dragging Tom with him. The ghost boy had fallen silent, and wasn’t saying anything, so Harry paid attention to his mum after making sure he was still holding Tom’s hand tightly. He might float away by accident if Harry wasn’t careful, and he wanted to help Tom more than just freeing him from an alleyway.

Harry’s mum was looking down at him with a little bit of sadness. “You found a new friend, Harry?”

“I don’t know if we’re friends yet,” Harry said.

“Did you run away from us because you saw them?”

“Um,” Harry bit his lip. “I saw… a pretty bird. And I followed it. And then I found Tom in the alley.”

“I see,” his mum said. Harry saw a little hard glint in her eye, and he worried that she might not believe him about the bird. Not that it wasn’t a lie - it was definitely a lie. But Harry wasn’t going to say that until they were home again, probably. “Harry, you know the rules,” his mum said with exasperation. “You’re to come tell us before you go haring off to help hapless ghosts! Let’s try to remember that next time, okay?”

“Okay,” Harry said, nodding carefully, and trying to look appropriately upset. He couldn’t really summon up the emotion - out of the corner of his eye he could see Tom staring around wildly, focusing in one direction for a few seconds, completely still, before suddenly changing focus and angling his whole body in the new direction for the next few seconds.

Tom definitely hadn’t been out of that alley in a long time, and Harry didn’t feel bad about helping him at all.

His dad showed up a minute later, and Harry got sternly talked at at again, and pretended to be abashed again. Only then did the family start walking - apparently now they were finally going to go to the Alley and stop messing around with weird Muggle things. Tom trailed behind Harry like a balloon, half floating, half walking - Harry thought that it might be called ‘ghosting’, but he always thought it was silly to use the same word for a thing in order to talk about that specific way that they moved. Harry loosened his grip on Tom’s wrist just a bit, but didn’t let go.

After a few blocks of walking, Harry felt the cold imprints of hands pawing vaguely at his arm. He glanced over, worried that Tom was trying to get Harry to let go of him. He didn’t want to - Tom probably hadn’t really been un-stuck enough yet. His form was, but his mind? Harry doubted that. If he let the ghost boy go now, then Tom would probably just find a new spot to stand and be still in.

To Harry’s relief, Tom only seemed to be trying to wrap himself closer around Harry’s arm. The ghost boy’s movements were uncoordinated, as if he were having trouble with depth perception.

“Do you wanna talk?” Harry asked quietly.

Tom just looked at him blankly.

“If you really don’t wanna hang out with me, I can let go of your hand,” Harry offered. Again, he really didn’t think that was the best idea. But sometimes ghosts asked to be left alone. It made Harry sad when they did, but he didn’t know how to help them if they wanted to be stuck and unthinking for the rest of forever. Fortunately for Harry’s conscience, it seemed Tom wasn’t one of those ghosts. The boy looked panicked at the thought, and finally managed to seize Harry’s arm with both hands until he was entirely wrapped around it.

“Don’t worry, I won’t if you don’t want to,” Harry whispered reassuringly.

You’re Harry, Tom said again. His voice was blank. You’re Harry.

“Uhhuh,” Harry whispered back. “I am.”

Tom didn’t say anything more. He went back to staring at the surroundings, his grip on Harry’s arm unrelenting. Harry wished that he could chatter to Tom more openly, reassure him with words that he was still there and paying attention to him. But as it happened, Harry’s mum had forbidden Harry from chattering to ghosts in public while they were in the Muggle world. Harry didn’t understand why, exactly, but figured maybe it had to do with keeping magic a secret. He contented himself with glancing over at Tom regularly, making sure that he didn’t look too agitated.

  


The dark-haired ghost only stayed taciturn until they got to the Leaky Cauldron. As soon as they were inside the tavern, Harry felt Tom almost convulse against him, and the boy began to stare wildly around - even more wildly than he had when Harry had first freed him from the alley.

Oops. Harry should have thought of that, probably.

What, Tom was saying. What, what, what, what - ? Harry, Harry what, what - 

“It’s magic,” Harry hissed shortly. “I can explain more later.”

Magic?? Tom almost wailed inside Harry’s head. Magic?! How - What - 

Harry shook his head a bit, trying to ignore Tom’s crisis. He just wanted to get into the alley, where the babble of the crowds meant he was allowed to chatter to his ghosts as much as he wanted to. Then he could actually explain magic to Tom. But his dad insisted on talking with Tom the barman, and his mum wasn’t making him move any faster.

That was a thought. Harry squeezed Tom’s arm as best he could. “Tom, look,” he whispered. “Do you see that man behind the bar?”

That man behind the bar? Tom repeated dully. At least he wasn’t wailing about magic, anymore, Harry thought.

“His name’s Tom too,” Harry whispered.

Tom didn’t say anything. Harry looked over and saw that the image of his eyes was flickering between the usual ghost eyes, and merely blank, empty sockets. He looked away from the bar - Harry wondered for a moment what the problem was. Then he noticed that the ghost boy’s whole image was shivering, blurring and fading along the edges, and he felt bad. What had he said?

At least Tom was still holding onto him.

Finally, after forever, Harry’s dad stopped chatting, and they went towards the brick wall. Mum tapped the bricks to open it, and they were through, swept directly into the crowd of shoppers clattering around on the cobblestone streets. Harry glanced over at Tom and grinned excitedly, even as Tom’s face didn’t change expressions at all.

“This is Diagon Alley!” Harry exclaimed excitedly to Tom, now that he was allowed to talk at a normal volume again. “It’s where all the magic shops are.”

Magic shops, Tom repeated vaguely.

“Uhhuh,” Harry said.

Magic?

“Well, yeah?”

How, Tom said again. He sounded hopelessly lost and bewildered - as if something just wasn’t making any sense to him, and nothing Harry did would ever explain it properly to him. Who did - how did - He didn’t finish his thoughts, instead falling into silence and staring around. He looked - heartbroken? Why would he be heartbroken? Harry didn’t really understand, but he felt bad anyway.

“This is the main alley,” Harry said anyway, defaulting to narration in the hopes that he could distract Tom from whatever was making him sad. “Mum!” he piped up. “Mum, where’re we going?”

“Madame Malkin’s,” Harry’s mum said, looking back at him with a small smile on her face. “Then maybe Flourish and Blott’s."

“Can we go to the sweets shop?” Harry asked plaintively. His mum frowned. “We don’t even have to buy anything,” Harry hedged, knowing that he was probably in trouble for running off to find Tom without letting them know. “I just want to show Tom what chocolate frogs are.”

“Are you sure Tom will like that, Harry?” his dad asked.

“Well, he didn’t know about magic,” Harry said. “But I think he’d like them.”

Harry’s dad frowned down at him as they wandered down towards the far end of the alley. “Why do you think that?”

“He’s like…” Harry paused, glancing over at Tom. “Hey Tom, how old are you?”

Nine, Tom said vaguely. He didn’t even seem to notice that Harry’s dad was talking about him, as well - he was just staring around at the alley, mouth dropped open and eyes wide, which just made them look even more sunken in than usual, and made Tom look even more dead.

Tom was only one year older than Harry was, and he was dead. Harry felt an uncomfortable little shudder pass through him at that thought, but he couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason he had for feeling that way. “He’s nine,” the green-eyed child declared instead, trying to distract himself. “He didn’t know about magic and I think he’d like them."

Harry’s dad stopped walking suddenly.

“He’s a kid?” he said.

Harry looked up at his dad in confusion. That had been his dad’s Serious Voice, the one he usually used when he was talking about his job with mum, when they thought that Harry was in bed and not lurking by the stairs listening like he liked to do. “Yes?” he said.

“You didn’t…” His dad made a frustrated noise, and ran a hand through his hair. “You didn’t mention he was a child.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He thought about it, and realized he hadn’t, after all, said anything. “I know I didn’t… is it important?” He felt bad all of a sudden, but he didn’t know why. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

His mum made an unhappy noise. Now that Harry looked at her, she looked upset, too - why were they upset that Tom was Harry’s age? “Are you going to make Tom leave?” he asked them, feeling worried. He didn’t want to have to leave the ghost boy - actually, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to, since Tom still wouldn’t let go of his arm.

“What?” his mum gasped, just as his father shook his head ‘no’ vigorously. “No, Harry, we won’t make him leave. We were just - surprised, that’s all… you never mention meeting ghosts who are your age.”

“Oh,” Harry said. Now he felt a little better. “I don’t usually meet them, actually. Tom’s the first I’ve seen in… ever?” He thought for a moment. “Yeah. Tom’s the first.”

“Can you tell me about him?” Harry’s dad asked, pushing open the door to Madame Malkin’s.

“Umm, well…” Harry said as he followed his parents into the shop, Tom floating along with him. He glanced quickly at the ghost boy’s face, but saw no sign that Tom even registered that they were talking about him. “I don’t actually know a lot about him yet. He doesn’t want to talk a lot.”

“Try anyway, Prongslet?” his dad said gently.

Harry gulped. He stole another glance at Tom - the boy was staring at a set of deep purple dress robes on display. “Well, he’s a boy, obviously. His name is Tom. He’s about my height? He said he was nine. He’s wearing a scarf and this weird old-looking gray coat covered in patches, and he’s really pale, and he’s got black hair.”

“That’s all?” his dad asked, as his mom talked with Madame Malkin.

“I guess,” Harry said. “Dad, he was stuck all alone in that alley for a really long time. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore - it’ll scare him. Please don’t make me leave him?”

“Hush,” his dad said, ruffling Harry’s hair. “I promise we won’t make you leave him.”

Harry giggled at the sensation of having his hair ruffled. “Thanks, dad,” he said. “Can I show Tom chocolate frogs before we go home?”

“Of course you can,” his dad said.

It took a really long time for the grown up shopping to be finished, and Tom didn’t give much of a reaction even to the sweets shop, in the end. But he did blink for the first time that Harry had seen, and his eyes followed the one frog Harry’s mum had gotten for him as it hopped all over the counter at the shop, so Harry considered it a success.

**Author's Note:**

> I think is the sweetest Harry Potter I've ever written. He's still kind of inclined to maybe become a sarcastic little shit when he's older, but for now he's really just absolutely invested in helping All Ghosts Ever. Must be that Saving People Thing.
> 
> This work will not have an update schedule, at least not until _the Importance of the Happy Ending_ is finished. Don't expect quick updates.


End file.
